


Conceal

by Katydid_99



Category: Death Note & Related Fandoms, Death Note (2017), Death Note (Movies)
Genre: And smarter than how the screenwriters wrote him, Character Analysis, Gen, Introspection, Lawlight if you squint?, Scene Analysis, Turner is smarter than he looks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 11:20:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13122666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katydid_99/pseuds/Katydid_99
Summary: Death Note (2017)- Light's thoughts on his encounter with L in the cafe.





	Conceal

Without the half-mask and hood, Light is stuck by how… normal L looks.

He’s no stranger to the mass media and mainstream pop culture that his classmates and peers (and him to some extent, he thinks, with his plethora of American Horror Story merch he has tucked away) inhale on a daily basis. He’s seen the vast array of cowls and covers and whatever else the plastic faces printed onto screens and pages wear. They come in all shapes and colors and designs, but they all strive to serve a similar purpose: to conceal.

This can have two meanings: to conceal an identity or to conceal an appearance. L both falls in and out of the first option. Obviously, he wasn’t always this slouchbacked supergenius. There must be some other person. However, whoever that other person is, he’s not here. He may have not have been present for a really long time. As far as it went, L was L: a man living his own secret identity to the fullest extent of reality. Additionally, he couldn’t possibly wear that Assassin's Creed knock-off hoodie all the time; he genuinely meant it when he told him he didn’t know how he could eat.

With one option gone, only one answer was left. 

Basically, Light had expected him to be disfigured on some level. Scars, burns, tears, sores. The hood and mask together obscured his entire head spare for a strip of flesh around his eyes, so maybe there was damage to his ears or nose or scalp. Maybe he was just ugly and didn’t want to bother with that distracting from his intellect. 

But when L lost his patience with him in the cafe and ripped down the warm black material of his coverings, Light found that not even that much was true. He was a little tired, a little malnourished, but other than that L wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. Slightly-elven ears and short, natural curls topping a soft, dark-complextioned face, complete with wide-set eyes and full lips. His voice was slightly less muffled, but no different overall: unobtrusive yet insistant with a barely-there accent. 

Somehow finding him this okay-looking was more jarring to Light than any malformation would have been. Hell, Light was willing to go as far as to say he was  _ handsome _ . He looked like a high-ranking grad student who’s just pulled a week of all-nighters to publish a thesis that will undoubtedly be published by one overhyped academic magazine or another.

And this revelation made Light smile.

Even as L shoved all his shit off the table like a disobedient cat and continued to threaten him in his soft voice with his pretty mouth, all Light could do was smirk. L wasn’t a secret superhero from the silver screen and he wasn’t a deformed mutant trying to make something beautiful of himself. He was a man. Nothing more, nothing less. 

L was nothing to be afraid of, and no matter what happened, he would go down.

**Author's Note:**

> Just a thought bunny I couldn't ignore until it was written.  
> While I don't think this film was AS terrible as everyone's making it out to be, I am pissed at it. There were a few moments were the actors didn't have a crappy script to read, and that was when I could almost be watching a Death Note movie. The cafe scene was one of them. Not only do I actually really like this L, there were a few moments in Nat Wolf's performance as Light that I found interesting. First, his hint of surprise when L takes off his hood, and second, the smug poker face he keeps while L is screaming at him. The second one I found particularly Light-ish, so it's one of the few bits of the movie I liked.


End file.
